Last Sunday, I was watching Family Guy, and a laptop commercial came up. At the end they showed the Intel logo and played their jingle. It was short, only four or five notes. And I unconsciously mimicked them out loud, simultaneously as it played. We are all brainwashed.
Since my youth, the number of minutes devoted to advertisements for each hour of television program has increased. And today we have even more marketing thrown at us. There are commercials before films at the movie theater, internet ads posted everywhere online, and magazines that are devoted to shopping or have more ads than anything else.
Have we gone too far? Take an informal poll around your office, you will be amazed at how many jingles and ad catch phrases we have memorized. Shouldn't our minds be holding more important information than the hook of a television commercial from fifteen years ago? Isn't it time for a little restraint?
Related Stories: | Topics:Management, advertising + PR, Family Guy, Intel Corporation, Media, Advertising |
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Recent Comments | 10 Total
June 15, 2005 at 3:20pm by Elizabeth Bolling
Yet, those ads and jingles are a huge part of our culture and thus a part of the "fabric of our lives." "It's the real thing." They're just the "plop, plop. Fizz, fizz. Oh, what a relief it is" in our humdrum little lives. I could go on... "Ad" nauseum.
June 15, 2005 at 4:08pm by Sumedh Mungee
Our minds have infinitely more capacity to hold stuff than we tend to believe. Remembering the Intel jingle may not necessarily cause something else to get forgotten. :)
June 15, 2005 at 5:15pm by El Beavis
Yeah, my mind should be free to absorb all of the intelligent shows that populate our networks. Give me a break. If you don't want commercials, don't watch TV. Go read a book. No commercials there. Or better yet, do like I did and get a freakin' TIVO. That way you can fast forward through the commercials. Sounds like you would rather complain than do something about it.
June 16, 2005 at 1:05am by Sir Pyscho Gonzo
What do you expect for us dumb americans that sit in front of the idiot box for hours on end. Hell, we were dumb enough to elect an idiot. Go read a book for God's sake!
June 16, 2005 at 9:20am by Michael Grzymkowski
You probably wouldn't remember it if some aspect of the Intel brand didn't matter to you in some way.
June 16, 2005 at 9:59am by Jim Snyder
The thought and technology brought to bear on the development of these "jingles" bring to mind how much we might be able to generate the same kind of automatic recognition/response to ethical responses in the same population.
These types of responses/decisions are agonized over, wrongly decided, and yield grave consequences.
The "corporate cultures" that strive to generate these automatic recognition of brand should be striving to make ethical responses as automatic.
June 16, 2005 at 10:57am by jh
"Isn't it time for a little restraint?"
Restraint on whose part? The stockholders pressuring the board pressuring the CEO and other C-levels pressuring Marketing pressuring ad agency?
Too funny.
And positing this in this venue is like asking a trade show barker if he thinks he should be more subtle...
June 16, 2005 at 11:32am by roger fulton
look around you boys and girls, if the big, bad salesman tries to sell you something you don't want, just say NO.
Nothing happens in this country until someone sells something. We are a country based on capitalism - we build, make (or used to, God help us) for a profit ( ewww, baaadddd word.....), so we could all benefit from it. We sell stuff.
And, if someone gets too agressive in selling things, JUST SAY NO.
June 16, 2005 at 11:35am by roger fulton
I spent a good part of my career and ALL of my college life learning to sell stuff to people.
No one ever bought who DIDN'T want it. NO ONE.
You can't talk anyone into something that doesn't want it, and don't try to convince me otherwise.
June 17, 2005 at 6:24pm by Joe Markwith
Just curious, I wonder what exactly what "it" is that people by? Is it the actual product? The feeling they have about where, when and how they make the purchase? How many of us purchase products to "fit in" or to keep up with the Jones? I am the only person to get suckered in to seeing Titanic from the hype?